Field of the Invention
The subject disclosure is generally directed to systems and methods for facilitating transactions between multiple parties, such as real estate transactions.
Background of the Related Art
Over many years there has been the development of multiple listing services (MLSs) that provide property listing aggregations for real estate brokers, agents, and other professionals in the real estate transaction chain that pay for membership. Each MLS generally consists of a database of residential, multifamily, commercial, and land real estate listings for the purpose of buying, selling or leasing those properties in a geographically specific market.
While the basic fields, such as lot size, list price, size of building, number of bedrooms, etc., are present in all MLSs, beyond the basic nature of the data collected by MLSs, their formatting varies widely, largely based on the historic preferences and development of the profession of each geographic market.
A standard for the transfer or exchange of property listing information, which is referred to as Real Estate Transaction Specification (RETS), has been developed by industry members over the last decade to address the formatting differences. The RETS is an XML standard that allows for the electronic interchange of listing information at the protocol level by, among other things, defining common basic fields.
While the MLSs remain a powerful tool which facilitates locating property to purchase, it does not facilitate the actual transaction or purchase of property between parties, which is still very much a non-automated and ad-hoc process.
For at least the foregoing reasons, there is a compelling need in the art for a real estate transaction management system and method that provides buyers, sellers and real estate professionals with the tools necessary to facilitate the purchase of property, and in particular, which facilitates the automated processing of purchase offers, counteroffers and acceptances, among other things.